Manitou Canyon (15 page)

“Lindsay's not much closer to him than I am. We saw him two, maybe three times a year. The only connection any of us share is blood. I can understand why someone might have it in for my grandfather, but Lindsay? It doesn't make any sense.”

“And you've given that some good thought, have you?” Daniel threw in. “Who might want your grandfather out of the way?”

“Not until Lindsay disappeared. I mean, I just thought Grandpa John might have had a stroke or something and fell into the lake and drowned or walked off into the woods and got lost. But now everything seems different.”

“Whose idea was it to hire my father?” Stephen asked.

“Lindsay's. After I told her about my dream. Or vision, if you will.”

Stephen nodded. “What did the vision mean to you?”

“Honest to God, I still have no idea what to think of it. I mean, it's not something I've ever experienced before.”

Daniel said, “Does playing blackjack help you think about it more clearly?”

Trevor cocked his head. “What's going on?”

“I apologize if we seem to be badgering you, Trevor,” Rainy said. “We're just a little desperate, and we're turning over every stone we can.”

“Okay,” Trevor said. “I get that. But I've got nothing to hide. And while gambling may be considered a vice by some, a lot of us just think of it as a diverting pastime. And so yes, Daniel, in a way it does help clear my head. Are we done here?”

“I think I hear Lady Luck calling you,” Daniel said, not hiding his sarcasm.

“Good night then,” Trevor said with a parting nod.

He left them and returned to the blackjack table. The redhead welcomed him back with a squeeze of his arm, and he took his chair and resumed his play.

“I'm no actor, but I know a little Shakespeare.” Daniel's dark eyes appraised the young man, and he said, “Where his gambling is concerned, me thinks he doth protest too much.”

C
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27

T
he tall man had bound him with tape, hand and foot, wrapped a couple of wool blankets around him for sleep, and now Cork lay next to the coals of the dying fire, listening to the sounds that the woman who hated him made as she slept and the low occasional moan of the kid, whose leg pained him even in his dreaming. Lindsay Harris slept silent as death, and Cork understood her exhaustion. The tall man made no sound, and Cork couldn't tell if it was because he slept deeply or because he slept not at all. Cork was weary in every part of his body, but sleep wouldn't come. Above him, the moon had risen, and its glow washed out the stars in a good part of the sky. The constellations still visible were as familiar to him as his own face in a mirror. The air was cold, and when he breathed upward, his breath became a momentary cloud against the heavens.

It wasn't worry that kept him awake. It was processing. He was going over everything he knew now, arranging and re­arranging the pieces of information he'd gathered since Raspberry Lake. These were the same people who'd been responsible for the disappearance of John Harris. They'd been waiting for Harris and his grandchildren in the same way they'd been waiting for Lindsay and him. They'd known Harris would be on that lake. They'd known Lindsay would come back to look for him. Which probably meant that someone close to the Harrises had kept them informed. He wished he could talk to Lindsay, mine her life and even, to the extent possible, her grandfather's. There were questions Cork
had now that hadn't occurred to him when Harris had first gone missing, and the answers might have given him an idea who had betrayed them. But the tall man kept them separate and would allow no conversation between them. So Cork had to go with what he knew.

They were headed to Canada, to a place called White Woman Lake. He thought he recalled a lake north of the Quetico, in a beautiful, rugged, isolated part of Ontario. He'd once fished the Manitou River near there, a marvelous flow, crystal clear and full of some of the best brown trout he'd ever angled. He believed White Woman Lake wasn't far away. What was in that part of Ontario that would involve Harris or his granddaughter? What was so important there that these people were willing to risk everything for it, including their own lives? Although he believed absolutely that they wouldn't hesitate to kill him or Lindsay if they felt it was necessary, Cork didn't think they were evil people, even the sour woman. Whatever the motive behind their actions, it wasn't selfish.

So what did drive them? He had no clue. At least not yet. But he intended to keep probing the kid, who was the weak link in all this, and listening to everything that passed between the other two. He hoped that at some point one of them would stumble and a good deal more might become clear. He had to be careful, though. The woman traveled with them but was not one of them, not family. If she'd had her way, Cork was pretty sure he'd be dead now. He wasn't certain what he could do about that except keep a wary eye on her at all times and hope the tall man didn't change his mind. Which was something he might well do if Cork tried another escape. Or if Lindsay tried. But she seemed resigned to her captivity, maybe because her life didn't appear to be on the line at the moment. Or maybe because she actually believed she might be able to help her grandfather. About that, Cork wasn't so sure.

He heard the tall man rise and watched him walk to the edge of the lake, where he stood like some solitary pine, a natural part of all that surrounded him. Cork heard his low murmuring, and although the words weren't clear, the cadence was familiar. He'd
heard Meloux and Rainy speak in this same way, and he understood the tall man was praying in Anishinaabemowin. Praying for what? Or for whom? The tall man bent and cupped his hands in the water of the lake. He lifted his arms, and the water emptied from his palms, drop by sparkling drop, like falling stars. After a while, he turned back and wove his way among the sleeping figures toward his blankets. As he passed Cork, he said, “You'll be no good to us or to yourself if you don't sleep.”

But Cork didn't sleep, not immediately. He thought about his children and Waaboo. He thought about Rainy. He thought that if, in fact, this was a journey from which he'd never return, there were things he wished he could have said to each of them. How much he loved them, treasured them, things they already knew, but he wished he'd said them anyway. And there was something else he wished he'd said, this to Rainy alone.

He said it now, whispered it toward the stars, as if they might hear and carry the message to her, “I love you.”

* * *

The lantern wick still burned in her great-uncle's cabin. Rainy saw the light as she walked the path across the meadow toward her own cabin. The moon was high and had lit her way clearly from the road where she'd parked her Jeep and along the trail that followed the shoreline of Iron Lake. She lifted her hand to knock at Henry's door, but before she rapped, the old man said from inside, “Welcome home, Niece.”

She found him sitting at his table, Ember lying peacefully at his feet. The mutt's tail wagged when she came in, but it was late and the dog didn't rise. She took off her coat and hung it and pulled out a chair and sat.

“You look like a woman who has traveled a long journey.”

“I'm so tired, Uncle Henry. It smells of cedar and sage in here. You purified?”

“I had a visitor. Your aunt Leah.”

“No wonder you cleansed. What did she want?”

“To wound me if she could.”

“Because you wounded her all those years ago?”

“She was hurt, yes, but it was not my doing.”

“Who then, or what?”

“Her youth, her vanity, her willing blindness. When she finally let herself see the truth so long ago, it split her heart open. For that, she has always blamed me.”

“She's blinded herself. She's made herself believe you led her on.”

“I have done my very best for nearly a century to speak nothing but the truth, Niece. I have learned that no matter how plainly I speak, there are some who hear only what they wish to hear.”

“You told me she might be here to stay. Is this a woman you could abide for long, Uncle Henry?” There was a harshness to her voice. When she heard herself, heard the anger, Rainy wasn't sure if it came from her fear of the woman's intrusion on this life she'd created for herself on Crow Point, or her concern for her great-­uncle, or her fear of what might have happened to Cork.

The old man ignored her question. “Did you find Corcoran O'Connor and the young woman?”

“They weren't there, Uncle Henry. It was just like John Harris. They vanished off that lake into thin air. Only this time something was left behind.”

“What?”

“Miskwa,”
she said. Blood.

The old man had been tying sage bundles. He put them aside and sat back in his chair.

“Whose?”

“We don't know. But there was a lot of it. I know I should be equally worried about the young woman, but I find myself praying mostly that it wasn't Cork's blood. Selfish.”

“Human,” he said. “Did you feel death there?”

“I felt a terrible violation of the spirit of that place.”

The old man's eyes narrowed to slits, as if he was trying to see something at a great distance. “It makes no sense to set a rabbit
snare where the rabbit will not be. Someone knew they were coming.”

“That's what we've figured, too.”

“Why these rabbits? And who set the snare?”

“We just came from talking with the grandson. This is a man I don't trust. I think he's weak and easily manipulated.”

“If he's weak enough to be bent by others, are you not strong enough to bend him, too?”

“Maybe.” Rainy laid her arms on the table, let her head fall forward, and closed her eyes. “I'm exhausted, Uncle Henry, and I'm so worried.”

She felt his warm, old hands cover hers. She looked up at him and found him smiling.

“Worry, and you open the door to the worst of possibilities, Niece. Better, I think, to hope. The heart invites a friendlier spirit for its company.”

“You don't ever worry?”

“Only the dead are free of worry.”

“What do you do when you worry?”

“I pray and then I plan. What are you going to do?”

It was as if the touch of his hand and the warmth of his smile had nourished her, refreshed her.

“That sounds as good as anything,” she said.

“This young man who bends so easily,” Henry said. “Where does the wind blow from that makes him bend? That is what I would think about.”

She rose and kissed the white hair on top of his head. “I'm going off to pray and to plan.”

She took sage freshly bundled by her great-uncle and went to her own cabin. With a feather, she smudged the air around her and then herself. She prayed to the Great Mystery for clarity and guidance. She turned her lantern to barely a glimmer and stood at her window and looked out at the night and the moon and the stars. She didn't have an idea yet of what she was going to do, but she tried to follow Henry's advice and open herself to
hope. Which had always been his advice and, in a way, had been why she'd sought him out in the first place, years ago. She'd come to him empty of hope, come running from her past, which still haunted her in the worst moments. In her life before Crow Point, she'd been a part of things that she believed were unforgivable. Joining her great-uncle had been, in its way, a last resort, one last hopeless measure.

She forced herself to stop thinking of what had been, and instead focused on the moment and on Cork. She thought,
He's out there, looking at this same sky, these stars, that moon. Let him know that I'm thinking about him, praying for him, and for Lindsay, too. Let him know that I will do everything I can to bring them back and that I won't give up hope.

She reached toward the window, where a ghost image of her hand reached out, too. At the cold glass they touched, and she spoke aloud her final prayer that night.

“Let him know that I love him.”

C
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28

B
y morning, the clouds had returned, and Cork woke to another gray November sky. The tall man had already rekindled the fire, and the others were stirring. They hadn't bound Lindsay with duct tape in the way they'd bound Cork. They'd told her if she tried to escape, she would only become lost in that great wilderness, and they would hunt her down, and they would not go easy on her then. She slid from her sleeping bag and tugged on her boots and said, “I'm going to relieve myself.” She walked off into the woods.

The sour woman who hated Cork stood with the tall man, looking where Lindsay had gone. “Not much spirit in that one,” she said. “She'll do what we need her to do.” She glanced down where Cork lay and said, “When she does, your usefulness is ended.”

They cut the tape that had bound Cork, and he ate breakfast with them, oatmeal and coffee. They were all quiet, the kid especially. When the tall man checked the kid's wound, he said, “The infection's spreading. But we'll be out soon and get some antibiotics in you and that'll clear it up pretty quick.”

“How soon?” the kid said.

“Two days, maybe. You can make it.”

The kid tried to smile. “I'll be there ahead of you.”

They packed the gear and loaded the canoes. The tall man doused and buried the fire. They pushed off through a thin glaze of ice that framed the shoreline and the rocks in the shallows. Farther out, the water was still clear. The clouds had held in some of the warmth from the day before, otherwise the ice would have been an
issue, a barrier. They'd been lucky, Cork knew, but he didn't believe their luck would hold. He understood enough about the tall man now to suspect that he didn't believe it either.

Behind him, the kid puffed as he paddled. Cork could feel that his own stroke was much stronger than the kid's.

“Ole walks into a beer joint and sees his friend Sven sittin' at the bar,” Cork said over his shoulder. “There's a dog under Sven's chair. Ole walks over and says, ‘Sven, does your dog bite?' Sven says, ‘No, he don't.' Ole reaches down to pet the dog and the dog takes a big chunk out of his hand. Ole says, ‘I thought you said your dog doesn't bite.' Sven says, ‘That ain't my dog.' ”

The kid didn't laugh and they both kept paddling. After a minute or so, the kid said, “A man walks into a bar with a frog on top of his head. The bartender says, ‘Where'd you get that ugly thing?' The frog says, ‘Would you believe it started as a wart on my ass?' ”

Although he'd heard that joke a thousand times, Cork laughed.

The kid said, “My dad used to love to tell jokes.”

“He doesn't anymore?”

“He's dead.”

“I'm sorry,” Cork said. “And your mom?”

“Never knew her. She left when I was too little to remember her.”

“So your dad raised you?”

“Him and my uncle.”

“Sounds like you must have a place in the woods somewhere. You live there year-round?”

“Yeah. It's pretty. The prettiest place on earth.”

“Where is it?”

The kid was quiet, then said, “Better you don't know any more.”

They made a short portage that morning to another lake, this one smaller than the last. On the other side, they were preparing to portage once again when they all stopped suddenly, lifted their heads, and listened, like an animal herd that had sensed a lion.
From far down the portage that ran through a copse of bare birch trees came the sound of someone whistling.

The tall man spoke in a low voice to Cork and Lindsay Harris. “If you say anything, you will be responsible for this person's death. Do you understand?”

He took the rifle from the woman and moved into the cover of the trees and became invisible.

In a couple of minutes, a single figure appeared on the portage, carrying a kayak, and whistling a merry tune that sounded Irish. As the figure approached, Cork discerned a middle-aged man with a full, red-brown beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He was studying the trail, his eyes downcast but his pace lively. A dozen yards before he reached the others, he glanced up and stopped dead, clearly startled.

“Well, ho,” he said. “Didn't expect to see anybody in this neck of the woods.”

“Hello,” the woman said, not cordially.

The man approached, set his kayak down, and slid the pack from his shoulders. He held out his hand toward them in greeting, Cork first.

“Bender,” he said.

“First or last name?” Cork asked, taking the offered hand.

“First name's Charlie.”

“Cork,” Cork said.

“Nickname?”

“Short for Corcoran. This is Lindsay.”

The young woman stepped forward, smiled tentatively, and said, “How do you do?”

The kid stayed where he was and made no move to introduce himself. The sour woman stared at the stranger and said, “Mrs. Gray.”

“So,” Bender said. “What brings you out this time of year, and here of all places?”

“What's wrong with here?” Cork said.

“About as out of the way in the Boundary Waters as you can get.”

“What brings you?” Mrs. Gray asked.

“Looking for wolves. I work for the DNR. I've been tracking a pack for the last week.”

“Haven't seen any,” the woman said.

“Hear any?”

“Not that either.”

“Which way did you come from?”

“South,” she said.

“Wind Lake?”

“I don't know the name.”

The stranger looked to Cork.

“Afraid I'm in the dark, too, Charlie.”

“Lost?”

“Not lost,” Cork said. “We have a pretty general sense of where we are.”

“And where you're going?”

“That, too.”

The man eyed him with some concern. “Have you been in the Boundary Waters before? I ask because if you don't have a good map, it's easy to get lost.”

“We're not lost,” the woman said coldly.

“Well . . . okay then.” The man gave her a halfhearted smile. He looked up at the sky, at the gray clouds. “My radio says snow maybe tomorrow. Not much, but real winter's not far behind.” He brightened. “Actually, winter's my favorite time in the Boundary Waters. I generally have the whole wilderness to myself.”

“You always run off at the mouth like this?” the woman said.

The man gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “Sorry. Just haven't seen a soul in forever. Well, best be on my way.”

“Good luck finding the wolves,” Lindsay said.

“And good luck to you,” the man said. “In whatever.”

He set his kayak on the water and stowed his pack inside, but he didn't get in immediately himself. He stood for a moment eyeing the beautiful birch-bark canoes.

“I'd give my right arm for one of those.” He glanced back at the others. “Did you make them yourselves?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then the kid said, “Yes.”

“Works of art.” Bender sighed as if he'd seen the
Mona Lisa
. “Well, like I said, best get going.” He slipped into his kayak and gripped his double-bladed paddle. “Toodle-oo.” He gave a final wave and was off.

They stood watching until he was far out on the lake, then the tall man emerged from the trees. He had the rifle slung on his shoulder.

“Should we do something about him?” Mrs. Gray said.

“Like what?” the tall man replied.

“We don't do something, he might give us away.”

“We have three choices. We take him prisoner and he goes the distance with us. We kill him now. Or we let him go on his way and we move on as quickly as we can. Which will it be?”

The woman studied the kid, as if assessing some ability in him. “Didn't you bring him along for this kind of situation?”

The tall man slid the rifle from his shoulder. He glanced at the kid, then handed the firearm to the woman. “You think it should be done, you do it, Mrs. Gray.”

She looked at the tall man, then at the distant figure in the kayak. She grabbed the rifle and walked to the edge of the lake. She knelt in a firing position and snugged the butt to her shoulder.

“You're not really going to shoot him,” Lindsay said, horrified.

Mrs. Gray sighted.

“Think about this,” the tall man said to her. “You miss that shot, Bender will run and we'll never catch him. We're done for sure.”

The sour woman didn't respond. Cork didn't know if she would take the shot, or if she did, would be successful, but the risk was too great. He tensed himself to leap and take her down, but Lindsay was there ahead of him. She threw herself on Mrs. Gray, and they both went to the ground. When they hit, the firearm bounced from the woman's grip and the tall man snatched it up.

“Enough,” he commanded.

He handed the rifle to the kid and turned to his pack. He pulled out field glasses and aimed them at Bender in the kayak. He watched a long time. Finally, he looked down sternly where Lindsay and the woman still lay tangled. “Seems he didn't see anything. Lucky for both of you. Get up and let's get going.”

The sour woman pushed herself to her feet, but before she stepped away, she gave Lindsay a solid kick in the ribs. “If we didn't need you, I'd kill you right now.”

Lindsay held her side and looked up at the woman. “Spirit enough for you now, Mrs. Gray?”

Which made the kid laugh.